First Extension: EE 1 & 2 to Vanilla Forums 2 Bridge/SSO
Development and Programming
Introduction
I’m pleased to announce my first ExpressionEngine add-on in the form an EE 1 or 2 to Vanilla Forums 2 bridge / single sign on extension.
I don’t have a clever name for it but I don’t expect any use. I guess I’ll think about that when I work on it some more.
Instructions
You’ll need an install of Vanilla Forums 2 with the SSO plugin before we go any further. On the SSO settings page fill in the text fields so it looks similar:
Authenticate Url
http://example.com/ee/index.php/sso/vanilla
Registration Url
http://example.com/ee/index.php/member/register
Sign-in Url
http://example.com/ee/index.php/member/login
Sign-out Url
http://example.com/ee/index.php?ACT=10 (EE1) or http://example.com/ee2/index.php?ACT=12 (EE2)
In the Vanilla Forums config.php make sure the following cookie name is set:
$Configuration['Garden']['Cookie']['Name'] = 'exp_vanilla';Now you’ve (hopefully) got that sorted move the “vanilla” extension folder into your “/system/expressionengine/third_party/” folder. You can enable that in the control panel now.
Create a template matching the one used for “Authenticate Url” with the following inside:
{if logged_in}
UniqueID={member_id}
Name={username}
Email={email}
{/if}Extra
You will almost certainly want to have your EE admin account act as the Vanilla admin so you will need to make sure that in the Vanilla DB there is a row in “GDN_UserAuthentication” that matches up your admin accounts (usually both have the ID of 1).
Finally
Clear all of your cookies and I think that should be it. You can now log in to you Vanilla installation using EE. I’m sorry it’s not easier but I don’t think I could make the EE side any easier.
There is basically nothing in the extension file and It’s all down to the clever folks over at Vanilla.
Wow, I mentioned this yesterday and here you go. If I don’t get to this today, I surely will tomorrow - will install, check it out. Many thanks!
EDIT: If you don’t know Vanilla, check it out. This is an unusual, but very innovative forum ‘platform’ with a worthy CI-competitor/cousin at its foundation.
Yeah this was actually created because of you. I was hoping it would give me a little bit more experience but pretty much all of the work has been done already. I only had to use one hook and that was to make sure when you logged out in one system you were logged out in both.
I really need to make something for Vanilla to make the whole thing easier but this works and I have no plans of developing for that system.
Any plans to make this work with 1.6.8?
Well I had no plans but I might give it a go now. There is basically no code to this as most of it is Vanilla-side so I don’t see it taking too long.
haha! Well don’t go out of your way on my account. I was just curious. I’ve been looking for a way to incorporate forums on my site LogoGala without using the EE forums since they are such a pain to work with. Would love to use PunBB but as I understand it, it’s just not feasible to create a bridge between PunBB and EE. Never heard of Vanilla Forums, but they look good.
Oh I’m not going out of my way.
Vanilla Forums has been around for a while now but they’ve went from being a project by Lussumo to a full-time start-up. I don’t know the full history but they’ve just been given millions in a round of investment and it looks like that’s just the start.
Anyway I feel really bad about releasing my code in the first place because this is more of a how-to but I need a break from what I was working on so a quick conversions should be possible.
I’ve managed to get it to work using the exact same instructions as above. I’ll add the 1.6 and 2.0 version to GitHub and update the first post to notify people of the changes.
Thanks! I’ll try it out hopefully soon.
I’m wondering though, I may have gotten ahead of myself earlier. With this, can users register for the site via the EE registration form and then start using the forum as a member? Or, must all registration information be entered through the Vanilla Forums? I’d really like to have the former, users sign up using regular EE form and then they are a member of the site and the forums and are logged into both.
It is indeed the former. Users register, sign in, and log out using the EE forms just as usual. Vanilla points all of those links to the EE forms too so that means you should never see on of those screens in Vanilla.
Great! Thanks for clarifying.
Had one more question I forgot to ask last night, I know there’s be discussion of creating a bridge between VBulletin and EE and it’s been said that it wouldn’t be a good idea to do that because any time VB or EE was updated, you’d once again have to ensure everything functioned correctly between both pieces of software. Do you see any issues with this at all? I definitely don’t want to get things setup, have a growing community and then update one or the other and completely break everything.
To be honest I have very little experience developing bridges between applications so I’d have to do a bit more research before I answered that.
Personally, I avoid using bridges and only created this one to try the process of developing an add-on. EE and most forum systems are just too complex to be linked effectively and I would recommend against it unless absolutely necessary. Even then, you’re better off just modifying one system to clone the duties of the other.
Thanks again for your input! I appreciate it.
Has anyone setup a dev site with this integration for testing?